that time I got fat arms

I wrote this amazing post the other day. It was really good, you guys. You would have liked it a lot. And then I lost it (don’t talk to me right now about farm internet) and try as I might, I couldn’t remember the way the words had gone together.

They were words about how a random, throw-away comment can sometimes wiggle its way into your head and haunt you for years. It’s happened to me more than once, but the time I’m thinking of was when, years ago, a friend and I were talking (who knows what about?) and she said, I hope I never get fat arms. I hate it when women have jiggly arms.

Now, this was back when my arms were young and skinny, but from then on I was terrified of getting jiggly arms.

Time and children and a few thousand cookies later, I spent a year being Mom to a little girl, which was wonderful and fun but also hard and challenging, and I super-snacked through the struggles of loving her. One day I saw a picture of myself and, horror of horrors, my arms were fat. And the shame of having fat arms, of having let myself go, was overwhelming. I resolved right then to never ever ever wear short-sleeved shirts again. Ever.

I wrote words about all of that in the post I lost the other day, only I wrote them better, and then I ended with a whole thing about how I’ve made a kind of peace with my arms, and the rest of me for that matter, and some more tralala about loving ourselves for who we are on the inside and all that stuff. There are a thousand articles out there telling us the same thing.

Then, boom, I lost it all and I spent the day frustrated and out of sorts because losing words is not fun for me.

Here’s the thing though, because God is awesome and has amazing timing. See, after supper, while the dirty dishes were still scattered across the kitchen table and the children and I were in the living room doing living room things, there was a knock on the door. I walked out to the entryway and found two women there, a friend of mine and a young girl. It took me a second to get my bearings enough to realize the girl was my girl. The girl I’d written the lost words about that very morning. The girl who’d given me fat arms.

Guess what? I didn’t give a fiddlestick about any of that, and my arms worked just fine for holding her in the tightest, squeeziest hug I could manage.

Advertisements